


Meta: The Impossible Girl

by Tammany



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-23 20:44:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2555030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which I fret a bit over Clara...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Usually I meta Sherlock. Usually I do not meta Doctor Who, as they're a bit more fluid in their decisions about continuity: you can't rely on them to stick to canon themselves, which makes comment more complicated. On the whole I will usually smile and let the show go as it pleases, by its own loose rules.

This time, though I think they've possibly tied things together for us.

 

The Bells of St. John, Assylum of the Daleks, and The Snowman are all prequels setting up the Three Points of Clara. In the third, a Clara avatar is tied into the Dalek mind and becomes enDaleked. In the Bells of St. John, Clara becomes tied into an incursion of The Great Intelligence and is almost turned into a spoonhead. I'm going to label them Victorian Claria, Modern Clara, and Dalek Clara for purposes of sanity.

Victorian Clara is a very odd beast. By night she's a common Liza Doolittle bar wench. By day, a proper Mary Poppins Victorian governess. She's successfull in this dual life, which to almost anyone who knows the period, is insane. It requires a rather young woman have two completely separate sets of mannerisms, wardrobe, skills, and identity markers. It requires her to have the wherewithall to purchase two entirely different professional wardrobes. It requires her to pass in two completely different worlds. On top of that, we're told she has a remarkably good sense of time. None of this is ever really explained--those elements of Clara sort of get abandoned by the wayside in the Search for Clara the Doctor enters into. I'm going to say, going in, that Clara is a very peculiar creature at the time of The Snowmen.

Dalek Clara is similarly peculiar as an absorbed Dalek victim: she has math/programming skills so advanced as to allow her to master the Dalek group mind, among other things. She's nothing more than a disembodied self by the time we arrive at "Assylum of the Daleks". When the Doctor and Amy and Rory blow up the planet, and mourn her loss, they're already missing the obvious: a disembodied being who manages to get in touch with the Dalek group mind and reprogram it might very well have successfully jumped to the overmind before the planet went up. It's not like "Clara" really was the Dalek that contained her--she was the parasite that owned a Dalek shell, when you think about it.

So, let's posit Dalek Clara jumps. Even if she doesn't jump, she's absorbed the ability to command the Dalek communal mind--that vast, lunatic thing with its history of enmity with the Doctor. 

Modern Clara is absorbed by the Great Intelligence, in the present day.

Victorian Clara is a very, very peculiar young woman who comes in contact with the Great Intelligence, before and after dying. Remember--she dies and Strax brings her back during The Snowmen....

The Snowmen establishes The Great Intelligence as being able to maintain and inhabit the form of the dead.

Deep Breath will later establish in the same time frame that the Droid came from the Marie Antoinette, sister-ship of the Madame de Pompadour--and it fell through time to a million years before it's proper temporal location. We establish that the Droid wants to return to "the Promised Land," which the Doctor swears is only a legend--a fairy tale.

But, as the series has made sure to establish, sometimes fairy tales are true. And when fairy tales are true, sometimes the Promise Land is part of the picture.

So: we have a Great Intelligence attempting to harvest minds at the same time a Promised Land is, presumably, harvesting souls--dating back in Earth time for ages. And we have peculiar Victorian Clara, who will come into contact with that.

Somewhere in all that vast arc of time we have The Master dying, with no regeneration, in the company of Tennant-era Doctor, with some real question whether he remained in touch with any vestige of the Angel Network...

Ok, at this point I think some of you have to see it: we now have a situation with Missy (the Master) in death arriving at The Promised Land, that's been in existence in some sense "with" the Droid and the Marie Antoinette. Missy is already largely free of time, and knows where to go and how to expand the range and access of the Promised Land, which is collecting the dead. Meanwhile, we've got the Great Intelligence and the Promised Land in the same place and time, dealing with the same people, suggesting that at some point they link. And we've got the Master's MO of changing forms and riding other beings, and the Great intelligence's habit of also riding other people. Throw in Daleks emBorging humans, and cybermen emBorging humans, and you've got this vast and interconnected web of associated links allowing for the notion of all of it being a network of connected minds and connected enemies entirely free of time once you've got The Master inside the network providing access to knowledge and tech. 

I don't know at what point the Master and/or The Great Intelligence boost a ride from one of the Claras--given timey-wimey the "first" time could easily enough be Dalek Clara, who then precipitates herself backward in time and ingarnations. It really doesn't matter, in a sense, because we end up with the Impossible Girl, who's existing with one face and one personality in at least three avatars, all of which have been shown to be linked, and none of whom are "normal." I myself think Modern Clara is the entry point: she's spotted by the Master, who's now both dead AND embodied with a new regenerated form as the mysterious woman in the shop who gives Clara the Doctor's number. Through this, she's eventually brought into the first encounter with The Great Intelligence, and her mind is inhabitted and permanently altered (thus her skill with computers after the adventure). Within this arc she ends up at Trenzalore, where she's propagated through time and space as the Doctor's "Impossible Girl" who's there to save the Doctor. But we've never been shown how and why she later incarnated as Dalek Clara or Victorian Clara--they really do not appear to be part of her Modern Clara arc of saving the Doctor at Trenzalore. So they are, perhaps still in her future. 

We also don't know for sure that the woman who came back as "Clara" was "Clara" anymore....really. Nor do we know what having Missy tied to the Great Intelligence tied to the Promised Land tied to the Dalek overmind does in terms of Clara's very existence. 

It seems to me that it really is possible that in some ways Clara is a plant. Certainly she's tied into three of the great mental hive minds: Cyberman, Dalek, and Great Intelligence. Certainly she's dealing with any number of the great recyclers. 

I'm dying for next week. I really am. It would be fascinating to see what they do with Clara. Somehow I doubt her story is "really" over, even if it appears to be. Clara exists in time and space in ways that really haven't been explained...and her survival after Trenzalore remains a paradoxical peculiarity. Now she and the Doctor are fighting yet another paradoxical battle, and I am entirely unsure where it goes--but it does lead me to suspect it's far more integrated with Ten and Eleven's plot lines than it had appeared.

 

 


	2. More Clara--small stuff.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just continuing to mull over Clara, and her complexity.

Modern Clara's known for her ability to find things--from childhood on. She's a finder--and she certainly "finds" the Doctor at Trenzalore, successfully searching him out to be there for him. But we miss the fact that as a child, when her mother dies, she swears she's going to find her mother.

That would give us an early entrance into the Promised Land, and it also ties thematically to her Orpheus-quest to find and retrieve Danny. So--it's at least a nice thematic/character win. It remains to be seen if it turns out to be a plot win: did child Clara make it to the Promised Land, and then forget? Was she made to forget? Lord knows, we are aware that forced forgetting is possible in this series. 

When did the Master/Missy enter the Promised Land? For all she has a body that apparently works in modern London, she's also fully functional and in charge in the 3W aspect of the Promised Land. (Is there more to the Promised Land than what Missy controls, I wonder?)

River Song, theoretically dead though stored in the LIbrary, asks as a final tease to the Doctor, how it is she's still present if Clara is dead. That's a nice set-up for us now, too: is River part of the great meshed network of computerized/computer stored minds? If so--who's dominant in the end? Is River-the-ghost also ruled by Missy? Or do we have a better resolution? Is the library part of the meshed minds? It is a very different but real forest, as it was a forest before? 

How complexly was Moffat channeling the themes and imagery and symbolism of the past eight seasons? Just how integrated is this season, anyway?

Moffat suggested that this was not a long-arc season, but we already know he lied: this finale is a long-arc finale set up by all the shows before, and to some degree by Clara-shows previously. But I am more and more curious if it's a huge-arc series, allowing Moffat to reweave great chunks of Whovian material into a new but consistent landscape, in which he and future writers and show runners can tell old stories in fresh, unexpected new ways. One of the problems he and his associates have to have reviewed over the Anniversary year is that, well--fifty years. I mean, yeah. What are you going to do after fifty years? So much is stable, entrenched, unchanging. 

But now we've got new ideas on the table, and a major reshuffle under way. History can be written--which means canon can be rewritten. Time Lords can not only change gender, but they can get more lives. River's gift of her own regenerations could be undone, allowing the Doctor a love/ally who repeats much as his villains have done, with River, like the Doctor, getting new faces. The Master is the Mistress. The Daleks group mind, the Cyberman group mind, and the Great Intelligence group mind, and possibly even the LIbrary, may be knit together. 

And, yeah. Again. Time can be rewritten. Temporal editing is an option--and not always a good one.

This just pleases the hell out of me. But, then, I love it when a writer/show runner manages to reshuffle the deck and gets it right--and this time it looks like Moffat may have gotten it right.

 

Question: If Missy = Mistress, does Seb = Cyber?


	3. Post-finale thoughts...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good and interesting episode, that closed fewer doors than some people seem to think.

So, let's see. What remains unaswered?

Oh, let us count, and count, and keep on counting! Or, no. Let's not: counting gets tedious. Let's say "lotsa" and start talking about it all.

Clara: still a massive mystery, with her tease at the start of "Death in Heaven" now looking painfully like it should indeed be foreshadowing, because so little has actually been explained and so much more has been left out to ask about. 

"My Clara." Yes, one supposes that Missy could just mean that she picked Clara and aimed her at the Doctor when she gave Clara the number. But that leaves entirely mysterious the two prior incarnations (on our timeline) both of which look entirely peculiar and neither of which is sorted out--and we know Missy's been up and down the Doctor's timeline, which suggests she will have at least some idea who Clara "really" is, and why the Doctor was hunting her in the first place. Clara remains just plain peculiar and profoundly disjointed, even by Doctor Who's wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey standards. 

And they wiped out Osgood. Do we really believe they're going to let that stand? Osgood dead?

And Missy--dead?

Of course she's not dead. Even if The Lethbridge Cyberman killed her--and it appears to be his shot that takes her down, not the Doctor shooting her with her dustification device--her "soul" is just going to be collected--as all the cyber-souls are recollected--into the Netherworld. Danny's decision did only one thing: wipe out the bodies of the dead, removing that particular threat to Earth quite nicely. But just as Danny himself returns to the Netherworld, so will Missy--or to her own Tardis to regenerate. Come on--she's been running the Netherworld for as long as people have believed in an afterlife. Do you think she hasn't built in a retrieval proceedure for if and when she herself dies?

There are other ways of reviving her and the Cyberthreat, but that's the easiest of all: just use the Netherworld as it was intended to be used. It's not like anyone actually turned it off. Indeed, for the threat of more and more Cybermen with every death to work, the Netherworld still has to retrieve and store souls intil they can be downloaded into regenerated cyberbodies. 

So. Missy's not gone. The Netherworld is not gone. The Cyberthreat, while diminished substantially, is not gone. Gallifrey is not found. Clara is not explained. Danny's soul still exists and is stored, much as River's soul exists and is stored. Clara's got a kid for a short term--but one suspects not a long term. The presence of Danny's descendent in Clara's life is not resolved--unless she's knocked up and we haven't been told yet, or unless the Afghani kid names himself after good old Mr. Pink. Osgood's gone when we'd barely been introduced.

And history can be rewritten.

If nothing else, Stephen Moffat is not going to want to land himself in a world with no remaining dead bodies except the few that escaped the rains and the destruction of the cybermen. Think of the annoyance of having to always remember from this episode onward that there were no skeletons in any grave, marked or otherwise. That every possible human repository of bones has been cleared out, including the stray Neanderthal buried with flowers and respect back in the paleolithic? No--somehow like most of the really BIG Dr Who stories, this one's going to have to dissolve in a flurry of paradox and timey-wimey. Which may get us Danny and Osgood back. At least this time, if I'm right, we've been played with skill, and we will have to go a good six weeks taking those deaths reasonably seriously as a short-term "Fixed Point' in Whovian chronology. It may dissolve later, but for now, Danny's dead, Clara's in mourning, etc. 

Frankly, I like this episode. Yes, I do think it will be washed away: that there will be a reset button. With Doctor Who that's more justified than with most series: by its nature time travel pretty much hands you Grandfather Paradoxes and Trousers Legs of Time and closed loops and so on and so forth. It's the nature of the genre. But this time they didn't wipe away the grief less than a week after it happened, and they did manage a conclusion that we have to take seriously--if only to wonder what elements of the resolution will stay, and which ones will go.

I'm sure Missy will be back--or some incarnation. But I hope Missy, because Gomez and Capaldi are magnificent together. I think Danny will be back, at least for Christmas and I would guess for longer: his descendents are counting on him. I think Clara will stay at least until her underlying secrets are revealed--the secrets that made her bluff of the Cyberman so plausible. We still don't really "know" who Clara is, and her claim that there never was a Clara works perfectly well. So--Clara for another development arc. 

And I'm just rooting for Osgood. I am SO rooting for Osgood. Clap if you believe in Osgood: that's right--clap! I do, I do, I do believe in Osgood! Bring Osgood Back, Mr. Moffat, Please! XD

Yeah: I don't want Nerd Girl, my personal representative in the Whoniverse, to be done away with. She's too awesome to die so quickly and with so little fanfare. So there!


	4. A few more thoughts.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like it says on the tin...

Clara has the bracelet Missy gave the Doctor--the one that would have made the Doctor master of the forces of the Netherworld. The one that let Danny send back the boy. The one that everyone seems to be assuming was a one-time use, which seems idiotic. Yeah, it did sparklies at the end--but I'm betting that it's either just fine, or that the Doctor can repair it. Because you don't walk away from this story that easily.

Danny's in the Netherworld. Missy may be in the Netherworld, as it would make sense--but it would make just as much sense for her to have escaped a zillion other ways. Stomping Missy/the Master is like pruning an old rose bush: it just encourages new growth.  No matter what you do, Missy/Master will be back. The Netherworld is not destroyed. The souls are almost certainly back in place--with new ones, presumably. Osgood? I would like us to save Osgood.

Clara, by her nature, seems like a good choice of Persephone-Queen-of-the-Dead. I can see her splitting her time between life and death, much as she's split her time between Coal Hill and The Doctor. 

"Santa" says much about necessity when he comes in at the end: Neither Clara nor the Doctor are "all right" at the end of this. They're shattered, alone, mourning, and determined not to expose each other to the kind of gnawing need they're facing. Clara would, inevitably, push the Doctor to try to save Danny again: after all, he exists a mere Tardis Trip away. The Doctor would inevitably push Clara too hard as a companion: he's staggering through pain as dark as he came through after the Time War, as the 9th Doctor. They're wise to stay apart--and their wisdom is folly. They need each other, or need some better resolution. 

I have to say, I really love both this season and Capaldi's Doctor. Granted, I'm a Moffat-head. I LIKE what he does when he's on any kind of a roll at all: I'm optimal audience for him. I like complex, I like self-referential, I like writers who deal well with the Fairy Tale/Legend elements of Doctor Who, and who understand that it really isn't "science fiction." Or, at least, not hard science fiction. Moffat does my kind of thing.

Even then, I think he's done superb work with this season--and I think it shows every sign of the amount of review and the deep evaluations that went into both the early days of Nu-Who revival and the far more complex review that went into the 50th Anniversary. Moffat's done a lot to regain some of the scope for the Doctor that was lost to a degree in Davies' day of pushing for better acting, more intimate relationships, and an aesthetic that occasionally turned too self-mocking. Russell Davies, in improving the show's grip on modernity, let go of much of its potential and much that made it flexible. I feel like Moffat's taken that back without losing what Davies gained for us all--we have stronger acting, more personal arcs, AND we've got back the fables, the legends, the idiot in a box/he's an alien grumpy old man thing. 

What I kind of hope is that we get a few seasons of this calibre to set a new standard and benchmark. This season rocked.


End file.
